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Can More Accessory Dwelling Units Fix LA's Housing Shortage?
Amrita Khalid
Amrita Khalid is a tech journalist based in Los Angeles, and has written for Quartz, The Daily Dot, Engadget, Inc. Magazine and number of other publications. She got her start in Washington, D.C., covering Congress for CQ-Roll Call. You can send tips or pitches to amrita@dot.la or reach out to her on Twitter at @askhalid.
Can more accessory dwelling units help a city with a chronic housing shortage?
A wave of new ADU startups that are based in L.A. or serving the region are betting on it. ADU companies like Otto (formerly known as Homestead), which focus on converting pre-existing structures (such as a garage) into housing, serve as a one-stop shop that will help homeowners with financing, design, permitting and labor. Other companies like Azure Printed Homes, Cover, United Dwelling and Villa Homes offer factory-built ADUs that are constructed off-site — also known as “prefab” ADUs. Others still, such as Cottage (based in San Francisco) partner with local contractors and help homeowners design, build and attain permits for their own custom ADUs.
ADUs (also known as granny flats, in-law apartments or backyard homes) describe a category of small, in most cases self-contained homes that can be built beside the original property. A prospect that’s currently trending in Los Angeles, where a chronic housing shortage and sky-high rents coupled with a 2017 state law forcing cities to relax their ADU regulations.
But as novice ADU builders soon discovered, constructing a small house isn’t a small task.
“I wouldn’t say [..building an ADU] is exactly easy, almost anywhere,” said Celeste Goyer, the policy director of Casita Coalition, an L.A.-based organization focused on expanding the use of ADUs for affordable housing throughout the state. “You can’t just go home and pick up a hammer, and have your cousin help you build your ADU. And so expectation management for everyone involved is important.”
The process of getting approved for an ADU normally takes months.
“Generally, many people struggle with the length and complexity of the permitting process and feel like their jurisdictions impose unnecessary red tape in the permitting process,” said Alex Czarnecki, founder and CEO of the custom ADU firm Cottage.
But a number of additional laws may make ADU construction easier in California. Last year Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 9 into law, which allows California homeowners to build a second house on a single-family zoned lot. Another law known as AB 221 requires local authorities to act on ADU permit applications within 60 days otherwise it’s automatically approved.
“It’s common for certain municipalities to take longer than that to respond to an application or provide incomplete sets of comments,” said Czarnecki. “This drags out timelines for permitting and ultimately impacts the pace at which we can add housing.”
Despite the new laws, few homeowners, Czarnecki said, should attempt to build an ADU by themselves.
“The fact remains that the average homeowner is not a land developer and is not trained or prepared to oversee and manage the design and construction of a new unit on their lot,” added Czarnecki.
To that end, the heads of some ADU companies still believe more has to be done to improve financing the expensive building projects — as well as making them more affordable to low-income and moderate-income individuals. A typical prefab ADU ranges anywhere from $140,000 to $300,000. Custom ADUs are even more expensive. Converting a garage is cheaper, but in L.A., the process can easily approach six figures. None of which factors in the extra costs of permits, which ADU firm Modal estimates costs anywhere between $4,000 to $8,000 in Los Angeles.
There are few mainstream financing options for ADUs available, and renovation loans or cash-out refinancing often don’t cover the entire cost of the project. In a 2021 survey of homeowners by UC Berkeley, nearly 62% said they relied on cash savings or money from a friend or relative to pay for their ADU.
ADU advocates often tout it as an “affordable housing” solution — assuming that property owners will rent them out as an extra source of income. But with the median price of a single-family dwelling in L.A. County almost nearing $1 million, building an ADU is likely an opportunity reserved for more high-income individuals.
“Financing is really the only thing I think of that the city of L.A. and everywhere else really needs to work on. I think L.A. has been doing great with ADU use, and hopefully it will get better,” said Ross Maguire, CEO of Azure Printed Homes.
Samuel Schnieder, the CEO of Otto, said that ADU financing is a major barrier to expansion. Adding that, “It’s often a Catch-22 that the people who are the best equipped or the most enthusiastic about getting an ADU are the ones who can’t necessarily afford it.”
The California Housing Finance Agency this year began offering up to $40,000 in grants for such individuals, but it only covers new ADU “pre-construction” costs, which include everything from impact fees to permits to site prep. In Los Angeles, homeowners with an income below $180,000 qualify for such grants.
A total of 840 people in California have received grants since September — with all but a fraction receiving the full amount, a CHFA spokesperson confirmed to dot.LA.
First launched in 2019, Azure Printed Homes, based out of Culver City, relies on robotic printers to speed up the construction process. The company said it can 3D-print the walls of a 120-square foot unit in less than a day.
Maguire told dot.LA that Azure — which opened up reservations earlier this year — has received pre-orders for 167 units from 119 customers, totaling over $19 million in pre-orders.
But it’s unlikely you’ll see most of these units advertised as new rentals on Craigslist. Maguire says that most of Azure’s customer base desire an ADU to have more space for themselves or to house relatives, rather than to rent out as an additional source of income.
As such, some homeowners opt for factory-built ADUs instead of a more customized option, opting to shorten the timeline for inspections.
“Because our units are pre-approved with the State of California, there’s not a building and safety check that needs to happen on a local level with the city or county of L.A.,” Maguire told dot.LA..
However, even pre-fab ADUs have to be inspected on-site by the local planning authority. “(...the L.A.) Planning Department needs to look at how those modules interact with a specific site themselves, a process that can't be pre-approved as they are site specific,” confirmed a spokesperson for Azure.
In an effort to make the ADU permitting process faster, last year, the city of Los Angeles launched a set of “Standard Plans” that were pre-approved by LADBS. But such plans aren’t cheap — and won’t exempt homeowners from inspections.
“It should be noted that regardless of what pre-approved plan you choose, pre-approved plans still must go through the normal site-specific checks in order for the project to receive a permit,” said Czarnecki.
And if homeowners have the misfortune of building a Standard Plan ADU on an oddly-shaped lot or somewhere with atypical characteristics, they may have to go back to square one. In other words, their ADU will no longer be considered “pre-approved” and will have to go through the longer permitting process.
“Although the Standard Plans are a good jumping off point for creating a product that anyone can use -- at the end of the day, they’re mostly more expensive plans from what I’ve seen,” said Otto’s Schneider.
Casita Coalition and groups like California YIMBY are calling for better financing options for ADUs, particularly those that benefit individual cash-poor homeowners. At present, new ADUs are predominantly built in wealthier, whiter areas. In order for ADUs to actually help bridge the racial-wealth gap, policy experts say they have to actually be a viable option for the less affluent.
“I would be very pleased if more financing options [..for ADUs] developed from credit unions and community financial institutions to provide ADU-tailored loans to help lower income and moderate income home owners build ADUs,” Goyer told dot.LA.
Until then, the dream of Angelenos generating income from their backyards may remain just that.
From Your Site Articles
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- United Dwelling Raises $10M to Address the Housing Shortage ... ›
- These Granny Flat Designs Are Pre-Approved in LA - dot.LA ›
- Meet the Culver City Startup Looking to 3D-Print ADUs in Under 24 ... ›
- Can New Tech and ADUs Solve LA’s Housing Crisis? - dot.LA ›
- What Will Take To Make Modular Homes Mainstream? - dot.LA ›
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Amrita Khalid
Amrita Khalid is a tech journalist based in Los Angeles, and has written for Quartz, The Daily Dot, Engadget, Inc. Magazine and number of other publications. She got her start in Washington, D.C., covering Congress for CQ-Roll Call. You can send tips or pitches to amrita@dot.la or reach out to her on Twitter at @askhalid.
https://twitter.com/askhalid
LA Startup Powering Immigrant Workforce Secures $7.5M
08:04 AM | August 29, 2025
🔦 Spotlight
Happy Friday, Los Angeles,
It’s Labor Day weekend, which means most of us are thinking about a little time off. But one LA startup is laser focused on work, specifically on the millions of immigrant workers who keep the U.S. economy running.
This week, Welcome Tech raised $7.5 million to expand its AI powered platform that connects immigrant communities with U.S. employers. If you’re not familiar, Welcome Tech has quietly become one of the most important bridges between immigrant workers and the American labor market. The company offers a suite of services, from job matching and financial tools to healthcare and education, built specifically for immigrant families navigating systems that weren’t designed with them in mind.
The scale is staggering. Welcome Tech already supports more than 4.5 million registered members, and its enterprise partnerships have tripled in the last year. Revenue is up more than 200 percent year over year. With this new funding, the company plans to double down on AI, personalizing onboarding, automating job matching, and expanding multilingual support so workers can find opportunities faster and employers can access a motivated workforce with fewer barriers.
Welcome Tech’s growth also underscores something very LA: this city runs on immigrant talent, and the systems that support them often lag behind. By building infrastructure tailored to this workforce, Welcome Tech isn’t just scaling a business, it’s tackling a gap that traditional employers and institutions have ignored for decades.
As Labor Day weekend rolls in, it’s a reminder that the real labor story isn’t just about time off, it’s about how companies like Welcome Tech are reshaping access to opportunity in one of the country’s most essential workforces.
And with that, let’s get into this week’s venture deals across LA.
🤝 Venture Deals
LA Companies
- Payment Labs, a Los Angeles based fintech specializing in seamless payment workflows for industries like sports, esports, and the creator economy, has closed an oversubscribed $3.25M seed funding round led by Aperture Venture Capital. The company’s API powered SaaS platform, already trusted by Microsoft, SEGA, X Games, and more, simplifies complex global pay ins and payouts across 150+ currencies and 180+ countries while integrating tax compliance, royalty distributions, and reporting. This new capital will accelerate expansion of tailored payment solutions and bolster operations to support high growth verticals. - learn more
LA Venture Funds
- Clocktower Technology Ventures, participated in Momento Seguros’ $10.25M Series A round. The Mexico City based digital auto insurer is leveraging the capital to expand its full-stack platform, offering flexible, mobile-first coverage tailored to underserved drivers. By modernizing payments, underwriting, and claims processing, Momento aims to disrupt a traditionally rigid insurance market with transparent, user-centric solutions. - learn more
- Dangerous Ventures participated in Copper’s $28M funding round aimed at scaling the world’s first battery equipped induction range. The Berkeley based company builds plug and play induction stoves with built in batteries that run on standard 120 volt outlets, simplifying electrification of cooking while offering backup power during outages. Copper plans to use the new funds to expand production, develop new appliances, and leverage its grid friendly design, already under contract to deliver 10,000 units to public housing, to drive broader adoption of clean, efficient cooking solutions. - learn more
- Alexandria Venture Investments participated in Leal Therapeutics’ $30M Series A round, joining a syndicate that includes SV Health Investors’ Dementia Discovery Fund, OrbiMed, Newpath Partners, Chugai Venture Fund, Euclidean Capital, and PhiFund. Leal is advancing its neuro metabolic pipeline with lead programs LTX 001 moving into clinical trials for schizophrenia and LTX 002 progressing toward initial clinical data in ALS. This funding will also support the advancement of additional pipeline candidates and technologies aimed at delivering transformative treatments for CNS disorders. - learn more
- Impatient Ventures and Riot Ventures participated in Blue Water Autonomy’s $50M Series A funding round to accelerate development of autonomous, long range ships designed for the U.S. Navy. The capital will be used to build and deploy the firm's first full sized autonomous ship by next year and support rapid scaling, as the team has already quadrupled since its seed round while completing engineering tests and securing materials from over 50 suppliers. This funding brings the company’s total raised to $64 million and underscores growing momentum around U.S. maritime innovation. - learn more
- TenOneTen Ventures joined a $3.5M seed round in Loman AI, supporting the Austin based startup’s efforts to transform restaurant operations using voice AI. Loman’s AI phone agent handles call volume by taking orders, booking reservations, answering FAQs, and integrating smoothly with POS systems, helping restaurants boost revenue by up to 22% while cutting labor costs by as much as 17%. This new funding will accelerate product development and team expansion as demand for Loman’s platform grows nationwide. - learn more
- CIV participated in AiGent’s $6M seed round, backing the AI driven startup’s mission to transform idle backup generators into a powerful decentralized grid resource. AiGent’s platform aggregates and orchestrates distributed generation assets including those at commercial, industrial, and mission critical facilities like AI data centers, turning them into rapidly dispatchable “distributed power plants.” This innovative approach not only enhances grid reliability and reduces costs but also opens up new revenue streams for asset owners without the time, cost, or disruption of building additional infrastructure. - learn more
- Blue Bear Capital led a $12.4M SAFE funding round in Splight, supporting the San Francisco-based grid technology company’s mission to dramatically expand transmission capacity using machine-learning. The new capital will fuel deployment of Splight’s flagship Dynamic Congestion Management™ across U.S. and European grids—helping alleviate long interconnection delays and renewables curtailment by intelligently leveraging existing infrastructure. This round also secures Splight’s ability to scale both its commercial and technical teams amid surging demand from AI data centers and utilities. - learn more
- Amboy Street Ventures participated in Nest Health’s $12.5M Series A round to support the expansion of its whole family, in home care model for Medicaid populations. Nest Health leverages AI powered clinical services, from medical to behavioral and social support, to deliver care at home while cutting churn and improving outcomes, including reduced ER visits and higher vaccination rates. The company will use the funding to scale its AI enabled care offerings into new regions and enhance partnerships with payors. - learn more
- VamosVentures participated in Kira’s $6.7M seed funding round, supporting the AI driven fintech infrastructure platform as it emerges from stealth. The capital will enable Kira to expand across Latin America, especially South America, scale its technical team, and accelerate development of new embedded financial products powered by stablecoins, AI agents, and enterprise grade APIs. Kira aims to streamline financial services in markets with large underbanked populations and has already generated $3 million in revenue in its first year. - learn more
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A Breakdown of the Data Snapchat Collects on Users
09:46 AM | November 14, 2022
Sebastian Miño-Bucheli
Santa Monica-based app developer Snap calls itself a camera company, but it’s really in the business of social media – and more specifically, advertising.
What Data Does Snapchat Collect?
Snapchat, their primary application, collects a myriad of data on its roughly 363 million daily active users, from basics like device information to detailed location tracking. "From day one, we’ve embraced data minimization, and believed that the best way to protect user privacy is to not store data at all, and if we do have to store it, to do so for a short and fixed period of time," Snap spokesman Pete Boogaard told dot.LA.
As such, like most tech companies’ privacy policies and terms of service, the verbiage is intentionally vague or full of legalese designed to make the user gloss over and click “agree.” But Snapchat does have to provide its users some details of how it collects, stores, and uses the data it gains from interacting with the app.
Bill Budington, a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told dot.LA that the common phrase, “necessary to provide service,” is particularly concerning.
“These are very vague ways to basically give a green light to very permissive practices in terms of your data,” Budington explained. He pointed out the ambiguous nature of the word “necessary,” adding, “[tech companies] can deem all sorts of things necessary, [including] using your location at every moment to better tailor their services to your life.”
While Snapchat’s terms of service haven’t changed since last November, the company most recently updated its privacy policy on July 29. Let’s dive into the various types of data Snapchat collects, how it stores it (and for how long), and perhaps most importantly, how Snapchat says it’s used.
Why Does Snapchat Collect Your Location Data?
Snapchat is very invested in collecting users’ precise location data, if users allow it. Its Snap Maps feature launched in 2017 lets users opt-in to showing their Bitmoji avatar on a map corresponding to their location and also allows them to track other friends who have opted in. It’s not dissimilar to Apple’s FindMy app.
In the past, the feature has raised concerns for its ability to make it easier for bullies and stalkers to find targets. Snap Map location, however, isn’t public information. Snapchat says location on Snap Maps will disappear after 24 hours, or when a user deliberately goes into “ghost mode” to hide from friends – but that doesn’t mean the app still isn’t tracking their movements. The company noted that unless you opt-in to live location sharing, the Snap Map won’t update with your location when you’re not actively using it.
Boogaard told dot.LA that while many of Snapchat’s core features do require location tracking, “location-sharing is off by default for all users” and “Snapchatters have complete control over their location sharing.” Snapchat added that there is no option to share your location with any user you aren’t friends with and that users have to individually select friends to share their location with.
Snapchat clarified that it does use location data to provide its Geofilters – custom photo and video filters often themed around specific places or events – and show people what’s nearby (also useful for ad purposes).
“We don’t share personal data about the users of the Snapchat app with data analytics providers,” Boogaard said.
Snapchat employees can also allegedly access all this information, and more – in 2019 Motherboard reported on a tool called SnapLion that it claimed was abused by employees to “spy on users.” In response to the report, Boogaard told dot.LA, “Any perception that employees might be spying on our community is highly troubling, and wholly inaccurate." Boogaard added, "Protecting privacy is paramount at Snap. We keep very little user data, and we have robust policies and controls to limit internal access to the data we do have, including data within tools designed to support law enforcement. Unauthorized access of any kind is a clear violation of the company's standards of business conduct and, if detected, results in immediate termination."
How Does Snapchat Use Your Content?
Snapchat can see the snaps you send, who is receiving them, and how often you’re online, as well as the metadata in each image.
Snapchat’s Streak feature (which tracks how long you and friends have regularly been sending and opening each other’s content) is one reason why the app also collects data on how often you and your friends open messages or capture screenshots.
It also tracks and scans the content users upload to its Memories feature. This is to train its AI to recognize the content of user images. In its privacy policy Snapchat notes that “if there’s a dog in your photo, it may be searchable in Memories by the term ‘dog,’” as part of its goal to make image search more accessible.
Snap’s policy also dictates that any public content a user generates on Snapchat is also fair game for the company to share though it doesn’t say how it will share this content.
What Data Does Snapchat Collect From Accessing Your Camera?
Besides the typical use for taking pictures, Snapchat can also access information from Apple’s TrueDepth camera – the front-facing, high-powered cameras that Apple’s iPhone X uses to record Face ID and Memoji data.
Snapchat says it uses this data “to improve the quality of Lenses”—its filter and augmented reality feature. But it also said it doesn’t collect biometric information, much less store the data on its servers or give it to any third parties.
Still, that’s a practice that’s come under scrutiny recently. In August, Snap was sued, accused of violating Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act by collecting and storing users’ biometric data without their consent. That $35 million case is expected to head to settlement next week, after a judge couldn’t rule in favor of either party. "Snap continues to vehemently deny that Lenses violate BIPA, which was designed to require notice and consent before collecting biometric information used to identify people," Boogaard told dot.LA.
How Does Snapchat Use Your Data?
Now that we know all the information Snapchat collects, what is the company doing with it?
The main use case is advertising. Snapchat has a myriad of advertisers on its platform and they are all eager to turn users into sales by showing them the most relevant ads. Ad pricing starts at a modest $5 per day, so theoretically anyone with a marketing budget and the right connections could use Snap’s tools to market to its growing audience of Gen Z and Millennials.
Snapchat promises advertisers “advanced targeting capabilities,” and the benefit of finding a target audience using its location, demographics, interest and device data.
But who’s getting this information? That’s where things get vague. Snapchat doesn’t have to tell users specifically which companies are getting access to their data. The company notes it may share information with service providers that it contracts for services like ad analytics or payments. The company also says it might share user information with “business partners that provide services and functionality” for Snapchat, but again, doesn’t elaborate any further.
Snapchat also says it will share information about users if it could help “detect and resolve any fraud or security concerns, comply with any investigations, legal processes or regulations and to investigate potential terms of service violations.”
Snapchat doesn’t have to tell users when it turns over this data, though. In fact, most apps don’t.
How Does Snapchat Store Your Data?
Snap’s Support site notes Snapchat servers are designed to delete all Snaps automatically after they’ve been viewed by every recipient; the app’s trademark fleeting quality. The servers will delete unopened Snaps between two people after 31 days, and unopened Snaps sent to a group chat after 7 days. Snaps sent to your story are wiped from the servers 24 hours after posting.
Snapchat also says that when you delete a Snap in chat, it deletes it from its servers and will “make our best attempt” to wipe it from your friends’ devices.
If you post a Snap to Memories, though, Snapchat’s servers will back them up forever – unless you delete them, in which case they’ll be erased ASAP.
So what’s the safest way to protect your personal information on Snapchat? Well, Budington recommends an easy fix: simply don’t use it. But for people who are determined to keep their account but want to access what Snapchat collects, there are ways to download your Snapchat data.
You can also opt-out of audience and activity-based ads and third-party ad networks. This will mean the ads on your Snapchat will be less relevant, but the trade-off is that the app will use less of your personal data for marketing purposes.Snap is an investor in dot.LA.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described Snap Map's location tracking feature. The feature needs to be enabled first, and Snapchat offers the ability to turn off the feature in Map settings.
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Samson Amore
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
https://twitter.com/samsonamore
samsonamore@dot.la
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